Could the European Parliament be the first legislative body on the planet prepared to pause proceedings to allow for a jury to scrutinise their ideas, using a corporate-friendly methodology?
On 15 July 2025 the Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) in the parliament voted in favour of introducing “impact assessments” of all “substantial amendments” by MEPs to legislative proposals.
Impact assessments have been used by the commission for many years, but until now the European Parliament has been hesitant to introduce them.
But this has changed now the EU has enthroned ‘competitiveness’ — ie deregulation and corporate profits — above all other considerations, and with a rightwing majority in the parliament. In that context, such a new procedure could quickly be weaponised by corporate lobby groups.
Impact assessments have been a cherished lobbying tool for corporate lobby groups ever since the tobacco industry — with the help of oil and gas companies — succeeded in making them mandatory for all legislative acts in the EU’s Amsterdam Treaty.
Since then, the commission has too often made assessments that are crude cost-benefit analysis.
While businesses are eager to broadcast — and often exaggerate — the potential impacts of new rules on their profits, it is far more complicated to assess the multi-layered and multi-faceted benefits — including non-monetary ones — to the wider wellbeing of society, or the environment.
For corporate lobby groups, campaigning to make impact assessments narrowly focused is standard.
The Farm to Fork strategy — which set out to make agriculture more sustainable — saw lobby groups for various industries and big farmers flood the commission with calls for a specific type of impact assessment.
They called for a single-minded focus on “realistic”, “practical”, “market-oriented” goals.
All too often such calls have been part of campaigns which ultimately defeated crucial EU initiatives, the Farm to Fork strategy included.
The prospect of MEPs’ “substantial amendments” being investigated through impact assessments, is thus a major win for corporate lobby groups.
And they are at work to secure a major win by trying to influence the assessments’ methodology, as with BusinessEurope that currently have their eyes on how further strengthen impact assessments emphasis on ‘competitiveness’.
Having bodies for workers in multinational companies for information and consultation, for instance, should be considered a “deterrence of foreign investment” and a factor that weakens the “competitive position of European companies.”
Once in place, the lobby groups will work hard to influence every impact assessment that touches their interests, before it sees the light of day.
As when the commission began work on an impact assessment on revision of REACH, the chemicals regulation, and was lobbied hard behind the scenes by the main chemicals lobby group, CEFIC.
If they see a need, they will do their own impact assessments too.
These help them set the terms of the media narrative, as with the chemicals example above, which focused on scaremongering over potential lost jobs and profits. This is the general tendency, to ignore a regulation’s potential benefits to society, health, and the environment, or wider related costs of inaction, for example overburdened healthcare systems, climate disasters, or cleaning up toxic products.
Lobby groups that wanted to see the Farm to Fork strategy gone produced no less than five such impact assessments.
They will then go on to urge MEPs to call for more ‘evidence’, or a more “comprehensive assessment”.
Willing MEPs could help undermine a proposal, or slow down things in order to help weaken it. After all, ‘paralysis-by-analysis’ happened with both the pesticide reduction law withdrawn in early 2024, and before that the revision of the Carcinogens Directive.
Willing MEPs could help undermine a proposal, or slow down things in order to help weaken it
If the European Parliament — for whatever reason — decides not to do an assessment on one of its amendments, or if the assessment is considered sub-standard, industry could still use a decision from the European Court of Justice to have the vote annulled.
There is precedent: in 2018 the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of BASF to annul a 2013 ban of fipronil, a chemical used in pesticides that is highly harmful to bee populations.
Given the previous weaponisation of impact assessments by industry, it’s naïve to imagine this won’t be a tendency going forward.
Demanding impact assessments of “substantial amendments” will be an invite to all the merchants of doubt to cast bad light on any measure that threatens their profits.
MEPs must ask themselves if it is really worth locking themselves to this path for years to come.
Given the litany of major legislation in the public interest being derailed by such tactics, why turbo-charge this powerful tool in the hands of industry lobbyists? Doing so risks further eroding democratic decision-making and damaging the European Parliament’s reputation.
This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.
Kenneth Haar is a researcher and campaigner with Corporate Europe Observatory, the NGO monitoring Brussels corporate lobbying.
Kenneth Haar is a researcher and campaigner with Corporate Europe Observatory, the NGO monitoring Brussels corporate lobbying.